


run away

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, inspired by ashley's talks machina questions, spoilers for episode 86, yasha needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 17:49:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21676645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: It doesn’t take very long for the Nein to notice.Yasha is quiet, but she isn’t subtle. There’s a weight to her footsteps that wasn’t there before, a hunch to her spine that suggests she’s trying to take up less space. Unless it’s to instigate an apology (another one), she doesn’t speak unless spoken to.(or; yasha needs a hug)
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Yasha, Caduceus Clay & Yasha, Caleb Widogast & Yasha, Fjord & Yasha (Critical Role), Jester Lavorre & Yasha, Nott & Yasha (Critical Role), The Mighty Nein & Yasha
Comments: 7
Kudos: 167





	run away

...

...

**run away**

...

...

It doesn’t take very long for the Nein to notice.

Yasha is quiet, but she isn’t subtle. There’s a weight to her footsteps that wasn’t there before, a hunch to her spine that suggests she’s trying to take up less space. Unless it’s to instigate an apology (another one), she doesn’t speak unless spoken to.

Caduceus figures it out first, because he is Caduceus, and also because he’s prone to walking around at night. The Xhorhouse creaks pleasantly in the night, groaning under the weight of a tree that was never supposed to exist. Caduceus likes to walk outside and stare at the starless sky, or sip tea in the branches and wait for a morning that will never come. It soothes the part of him that misses sunlight, sitting up in the tree in the dim glow of the fairy-lights.

The night is dark, and the air is thick with heat. Caduceus rolls out of bed and pads over to the door. He’s tired, but he doesn’t want to actually go to sleep. Too much has been happening over the past few weeks. As much as Caduceus would like to drift off, he finds his brain working at eleven different layers, waiting for the next blade to the back. While there are some pleasant side-effects to this hypervigilance – Caduceus has never been more appreciative of a good cup of tea while sitting with his back against a tree – there are some downsides. The insomnia annoys him.

Caduceus opens the door, and almost trips over Yasha.

“Oh,” he says, staring down at her. His brain is still a little muffled, so it takes a few seconds for the sight to register. “Good morning.”

Yasha glances up at him, naked terror bleeding across her face. She scrambles up against the opposite wall like he’s afraid he’s going to hurt her. Or she’s going to hurt him.

“Yes,” she says, when Caduceus continues to stare. “Good…good morning.”

Caduceus shakes his head. “Wait, isn’t it really late? What time is it, anyway?”

“I thought you knew,” Yasha says. “You’re the one who is awake.”

“Are you dreaming, then?” Caduceus says, tilting his head to one side in genuine contemplation.

“I don’t know,” Yasha says. Her smile is brittle. “Maybe I am.”

“Come and have some tea with me,” Caduceus says. He holds up his bag and waves it invitingly in her face. “Let’s make this a nice dream.”

Yasha gets up. Like this, with her head ducked and her shoulders pulled down, she barely reaches his chest. “Are you sure you’re okay with me being there?”

“I would tell you if I had a problem with it,” Caduceus says. “Let me show you my favourite tree branch…”

…

…

Jester refuses to sleep in her room.

It’s a comfort kind of thing. She doesn’t know what to do with herself without having the warm glow of Caleb’s hut above her as she drifts off. Most of her time is spent alternating between hanging out in the common area and painting dicks on everyone’s doors. She awards herself points for every complaint she receives – double points for Fjord’s dead-inside expression every time he wants to go outside. Caleb is annoyingly unflappable, but Jester will figure him out. She’s good at getting people to their breaking point.

(In the most lovable way, of course).

There are only so many places she can hide drawings of dicks, though, before it starts to lose some of its sparkle. Jester has hidden so many lewd drawings in the house that no one even blinks.

“Some people just don’t appreciate art,” Jester tells Frumpkin. Frumpkin just blinks slowly up at her from where he’s sitting on the floor, and she is standing on a precarious stack of chairs to get to the ceiling. She licks the tip of her paintbrush and squints at her latest masterpiece. “I don’t think the nose is quite right –”

Frumpkin looks down at his paws and starts licking in-between his claws. Jester ignores his hurtful lack of interest.

She’s almost done. Her arms are starting to feel the strain, but she’s worked under much worse conditions. If only these damn chairs would stop _moving_ –

Oh no.

Jester is too surprised to even let out a shout when her pile of furniture starts to wobble, and sway, and then fall. She braces herself for a landing that’s going to _hurt_, dammit, thank the Traveller she’s the cleric of the group so she doesn’t have to ask someone to heal her up, how _embarrassing_ –

Jester doesn’t land.

Well, Jester _does_ land, but she doesn’t land on the ground. Strong arms catch her, grabbing underneath her knees and her back in the perfect princess-carry. If it was Fjord, Jester would have swooned, just to see him blush.

It isn’t Fjord.

“Hi, Yasha,” Jester says, smiling at Yasha’s stoic face. “How long have you been watching me?”

Yasha wordlessly puts Jester back onto the ground. Her hands are gentle, the movements uncertain. As soon as Jester is upright, she shrinks back like she’s been burned.

“Thank you,” Jester adds.

Yasha nods. She glances back at the open door, and then up at the ceiling.

Jester takes the opportunity to preen. “Pretty good, right? I’m really excited for everyone to wake up tomorrow and see it.”

“It is very nice,” Yasha says.

“I still think I’ve got Caleb’s nose wrong,” Jester says. “But he’s just got such an annoying _face_, you know?”

Yasha seems to think about this. “He looks like Caleb to me.”

“What about the others?”

Yasha purses her lips, the tension in her shoulders easing as she fully concentrates on taking in Jester’s newest mural. It’s of all of them – Jester, and Yasha, and Fjord, and Beau, and Caleb, and Frumpkin, and Nott, and Caduceus, and Molly – all looking very scruffy, standing in a field of flowers.

“I had to check my notebook,” Jester says. “But this is what we looked like, when we first met each other.”

Yasha just stares up at the mural, expression complicated.

“We’ve all come so far,” Jester says. “I wanted to remind everyone.”

“I have come very far,” Yasha says. “And that is not a good thing.”

Jester turns to look at her, hands on her hips. “It is very late, and I am done arguing about this,” she says. “Lift me up so I can fix Caleb’s nose.”

Yasha bends down and offers Jester her hands. Jester steadies her hands on Yasha’s shoulders, and then she’s being lifted into the air. It takes a few seconds to wobble around and get a comfortable position, but once she’s there Yasha turns to stone underneath her.

“I think that everybody will love it,” Yasha says half-an-hour later, so quietly that Jester almost doesn’t hear her. Her arms aren’t even shaking.

Jester smiles to herself, and paints a dick on Fjord’s breastplate.

…

...

Nott is more direct.

“Hold this vial of acid,” she says, shoving said via of acid into Yasha’s hands before Yasha can actually protest.

Yasha stands there and stares down at the bubbling green liquid, hovering in an awkward in-between area of the hallway and Nott’s room/laboratory. There are beakers and bubbles and all sorts of weird jars filled with random assorted pieces of plant matter lining the walls and the tables and the floor.

“Where do you want this?” Yasha says. She doesn’t enter the room.

“Just stand there and hold it,” Nott says. “Make yourself useful.”

Yasha just nods and stands there and holds it.

Nott bustles around her room with various glass beakers in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other. Liquid flows between pieces of piping, the colours bright and glittering in the firelight. All the windows are closed and curtained off, though even without that, the atmosphere would be dark.

“I’m trying to produce an acid stronger than what I already have,” Nott says. She seems to enjoy talking while she works. “It doesn’t work fast enough.”

“Okay,” Yasha says.

“I’d _really_ like something that would work on magical objects,” Nott says. “But I think that would also require an enchantment, and we’re kind of broke at the moment.”

“We are always broke,” Yasha says.

“I always carry a lot of acid,” Nott says. “Everywhere on my person. In my bag. It hurts people a lot when I pour it on them.”

“I expect it does,” Yasha says evenly.

Nott turns to look at her, yellow eyes gleaming. Her face is shadowed, the glowing edges of her tattoo highlighting her cheekbones and deepening the darkness across her face. Her smile has a lot of teeth.

“I don’t trust you anymore,” Nott says. “I don’t think you did it on purpose, but I don’t trust you. If you do something like that again – if you hurt any of us again – I’ll pour this acid right down your throat and watch you melt from the inside out.”

Yasha blinks slowly. “Okay.”

Nott’s smile widens. She walks over and takes the vial from Yasha’s fingers.

“You’re useless,” Nott says. “Go and sit in the corner and don’t get in my way.”

Yasha smiles softly to herself and does as directed.

…

…

Caleb comes and drapes Frumpkin across Yasha’s shoulders.

“He’ll make you feel better,” he says.

(he does).

…

…

It takes Fjord a little while. He’s avoiding Yasha, after all.

The whole thing is entirely conscious, and he feels bad about it, but he also doesn’t want to be in the same room with her. Fjord has nightmares about Yasha’s blade coming down into Beau’s abdomen, about Molly and Lorenzo, about the Iron Shepherds and Jester’s gagged, tear-stained face. For every hurt they have been through, Yasha has been in another room, past another wall. Fjord feels bad, but not bad enough.

Yasha notices, because this is a small house, and she isn’t stupid. Fjord’s accent slides around her; he avoids certain areas of the house; he sticks closer to Jester and Beau than before. Caduceus is the official therapist of the Mighty Nein. Let him deal with Yasha while Fjord is still sorting out all of his problems.

Revelations like these seem to happen at night. “Night” being entirely subjective, of course – everyone goes off Caleb’s internal ticking clock, because otherwise they’d be hopelessly lost about when to sleep and when to rise. They retire around the same time every night. There’s this weird fear that the more they acclimatise to the fathomless darkness, the harder it will be to see the sun.

Fjord is thirsty, and it is relatively late, and no one should be awake. He walks out of his room and to the kitchen. The floorboards creak under his weight as he slides past the silent rooms and downstairs. He doesn’t bother turning on a light. He can see well enough, after all.

Yasha is pressed up into the corner of the kitchen, fingers clenched against the bare skin of her upper arms, Frumpkin wedged into the space between her chest and her knees. Her eyes seem to glow in the darkness, face pale and bloodless.

Fjord stops at the door and stares at her.

She doesn’t notice him. She isn’t looking at anything in particular, just the wall. Her expression is vague and unfocused. Fjord discretely begins to curl his fingers through the air, the phantom weight of his sword pulling tight along the skin of his palm.

Yasha’s eyes snap to him. She looks feral.

Then she buries her face into her knees and starts to shake.

“I can still hear him,” she says.

Fjord goes and gets some water. He sits down in front of her and doesn’t move.

“He keeps telling me to do things,” Yasha says, voice horse and strained. “He’s in my head, _all the time_. I thought – I thought that when –” she shakes her head and curls tighter around Frumpkin.

Fjord bites his top lip and considers her. Hesitantly, he reaches out to pat her arm. Yasha flinches away like she’s been burned, pressing tighter against the wall. Her breathing is heavy.

“You can’t do that,” she says. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I might hurt you. You can’t be near me.”

Fjord sighs through his nose and takes a swig of water. He doesn’t have the words for this. He considers, with no small amount of amusement, how that would surprise Beau.

So instead he just sits there with her and waits for the house to come alive once again.

…

…

Beau has been giving Yasha space.

Getting stabbed is rapidly becoming quite impersonal. Hell, she’s been shot by Nott before, what’s a blade to the chest? Everyone else seems kind of weird about it, but Beau is totally fine.

Yasha is very much not fine.

Every time Beau tries to get her one-on-one, just to – like, _talk about it_, she manages to squirm out of the conversation with as much grace as an owlbear in a shop full of explosive and possibly dangerous magical items. Which is to say – surprisingly well, considering her size and lack of social awareness. Running in the opposite direction usually does the trick.

After the first few times, Beau gets the hint. Of course, there are the apologies – an _endless_ list of apologies, small and large and heartbreakingly sincere. Yasha apologises for breathing on a regular basis. Beau can’t do much about it, considering Yasha also apologises for standing in Beau’s general space, so she ropes Jester for that little side project. She’s first-mate of this motley crew of misfits, after all, and Yasha is one of hers – whether she _likes it or not_.

So Beau goes to the common areas and makes her presence loud and bright. She makes sure there are always people around her, because Yasha won’t approach unless there’s someone else as a buffer. It’s very much like reeling in a stray cat. Not that Beau has much experience with cats. Or animals in general. There had been other initiates at the Cobalt Soul that had been fans of luring unsuspecting alley cats into their dorm rooms and then getting them fat off pilfered food. It had been an entertaining way to level up their skills against nosy dorm inspections – at one point, there had been a game of “catch the cat before Archivist Zeenoth finds it and kills it and then kills us”. Nothing built comradery like a common enemy.

Beau had mostly stayed away from that kind of thing, but she knows enough about scared animals – and scared people, for that matter – to know that approaching Yasha at the moment would be a bad idea. She’s skittish, prone to flinching, and refuses to have her sword on her while in the house. That had been an uncomfortable argument to have. Beau had let Caleb take the reigns on that one. They had managed to convince her to wear armour while doing errands, at least.

Slowly adjust. That’s what Beau is getting Yasha to do.

There’s a knock on her door.

Beau glances up from where she’s doing her stretches, shoving her staff off to the side and getting to her feet.

“Come in,” she says. She hadn’t thought anyone else was at the house – Jester had wanted to go shopping, and had roped basically everyone else to go with her. Beau had declined, citing a need to work on her flexibility. She’s been getting horribly out of shape without any kind of consistent workout routine.

Yasha opens the door.

Beau blinks at her blankly for a few seconds, and then grabs her shirt and shoves it over her head. Some things just aren’t appropriate to do half-naked.

“Hello,” Yasha says. She stays in the hallway, shoulders hard and tense.

“Hey,” Beau says, leaning up against the wall and crossing her arms over her chest. Gentle. Be gentle.

Yasha swallows hard. “I don’t,” she says, and then cuts off with a sharp shake of her head. “I am having – a lot of trouble being – being alone at the moment. My head is not a very nice place to be.”

Beau arches her eyebrow at her.

“Can,” Yasha says, and then visible steels herself. “Can I stay in here with you? I don’t want to be alone.”

Beau can’t stop a smile from breaking out across her face. “Of course,” she says, gesturing Yasha into her room with a jerk of her head. “All you had to do was ask, idiot.”

…

…

**Author's Note:**

> ASHLEY IS BACK YOU GUYS
> 
> yasha bb i missed you. here's a hug (or nein), from me to you <3
> 
> ignore my typos guys please i'm so tired and sick (unless they're like, stupid bad. then tell me so i can die of embarrassment).


End file.
